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Public Money for Campaigns?

June 22nd, tomorrow, is “Voter-Owned Elections Lobby Day” at the North Carolina General Assembly. Sponsored by the North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections (NCVCE), the day will be dedicated to garnering support for HB120, which would allow large municipalities (pop. >50,000) to publicly fund municipal campaigns. SB966 which would expand publicly funded statewide races to include Secretary of State, Attorney General, Treasurer, Commissioner of Agriculture and Commissioner of Labor, will also be emphasized. Partners of NCVCE, including the NAACP of NC, the League of Women Voters and the North Carolina Association of Educators, are all co-sponsoring the lobby day.

The goal of voter-owned elections, which is a nice way of describing campaigns paid for by government, is to minimize the impact of money in elections. However, doing so would come at the expense of legitimate government expenditures on such things as education and infrastructure. Budgeting is about prioritizing and funding elections is not a cause worthy of taking money out of the productive private sector through taxes, especially considering the cuts that K-12 education and the UNC system are facing.

Currently, you have a choice on whether funding campaigns is a worthwhile investment; you can choose to contribute to candidates that you support. Publicly funded campaigns would take that decision away from you. Government is supposed to run elections but it is not the purpose of government to fund candidates. Candidates accepting public funds would be required to adhere to strict campaign regulations, a form of government control.

When considering policy, it is always good to ask the following three questions: Does the policy increase freedom? In this case, no – in fact, it restricts freedom. Does the policy make government more efficient? No, these two bills would needlessly increase the size of bureaucracy and impose onerous regulations that would require government oversight. Does the policy promote fairness? No. What is fair about forcing taxpayers to fund the political campaigns of candidates that they may not even support? A fourth question: all things considered, are voter-owned elections a good policy?

Reader Interactions

Discussion

Good question – are publicly funded campaigns a good investment. Definitely, rather than letting big money decided who gets heard, let’s let all legitimate candidates be heard. We don’t have to vote for them, just let them be heard. I promise you that the big money contributions are costing us way more than we would contribute to public funds.

The choice is clear – should people decide who is elected or big money?

If you beleive people should be allowed to decide which candidates to support with their vote, shouldn’t they also be allowed to decide which candidates to support with their money?

Moreover, people have a right to free speech, but there is no right to “get heard” (i.e. force others to pay for your campaign ads).

Taxpayer-funded political campaigns merely attempt to address the symptom, rather than the disease. The disease being government control over our lives. One should pause and ask why “big money” is so interested in politicians in the first place? A properly limited government that does not dispense with special favors for some and punitive restrictions on others would be of little interest to “big money.”

As long as government is the source of so much power over people’s lives and economic affairs, “big money” will find a way to gain access and priveledge, regardless of any taxpayer-financed campaigning schemes.

My answer…No. Who gets to choose who runs? The costs are too high… a national race needs 50 offices minimum to campaign throughout the states. Multiply this by the number of candiates and its gets opressive. Similarly the HR fills 435 seats every 2 years…thats a lot of public funding.

My rebuttal….Unsustainable??? How so? Shorter campaigns won’t happen unless you want to limit free speech and prevent someone from announcing their intent and campaign appearances. Fixed budgets?? Not unless you limit the number of candidates…I hear there was ONE allowed in Venezuela. Quality instead of quantity? See previous sentence and know that government will choose who runs for you.

I think we are talking ideology vs practicality. Big money, mostly corporate money controls the elections now. We can either keep this or allow people to have a say (that is heard) by funding all candidates that meet a minimum support level within our communities and then let the people (us) decide who to vote for. Now with corporate dominated campaigns, most people are only hearing from the big money candidates.

You make a good point Dave, but most of the ideas that are floated on the fixes end up with less freedom, less choice, and less savings. How would you propose to accomplish your goal? What specific changes in the current law do you propose. The big money candidates are typically the incumbents. Maybe the debate shouldn’t be on public funding, but on term limits.

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